In late eighties, with the
consolidation of nationalism as the state ideology in Serbia, the propaganda
directed against women grew stronger. It is well known that in periods of acute
crisis, economic repression or marked repression, women are called to turn back
to "home and family"; they are referred to as "the angels of the home earth", as
ideal mothers, as faithful wives… Such propaganda, among other things, aims at
postponing or preventing social tensions, outburst of social discontent caused
by mass lay-offs of working men and women. Women are the first to be fired; it
is demanded that they hand their jobs over to men. At the end of eighties and
the beginning of nineties, when over a half of enterprises were suffering severe
economic losses, preparations started for mass lay-offs, mostly of employed
women.

For that
reason, in early 1990, demographers and physicians, wholeheartedly supported by
regime-sponsored mass media and institutions, offered some "very interesting
legal proposals concerning women". Although these false promises lacked any
realistic basis, some of these "projects" must be singled out for their cynicism
and underestimation of women.

Projects Devoted to Wives
and Mothers

In February 1990, Ivan
Knajter, a physician and self-proclaimed demographic expert, proposed "legal
innovations designed to help the reaffirmation of the family". He suggested the
imposition of taxes on unmarried or divorced men and women over the age of
thirty. According to the explanation of the project author, the tax would
consist of 10 percent of the salaries of these unfit persons. The goal of the
project was to "prevent the disastrous decline in birth-rate in Serbia"; it is
not clear why it would be so important whether children are born within or
outside marriage. The said "expert" suggests that "persons who refuse to accept
voluntarily matrimonial duties should be forced to do so". This idea never
occured even to Stalin! In his times, the model of the "woman-hero of maternity,
under the benignant moustaches of uncle Joseph" was launched. Hitler required
German women to place their bodies at disposal for the renewal of the Aryan
race. And both of them considered themselves collective fathers, either of the
working class or of the nation.

In order to avoid suspicion
as to his own "moral-political pedigree" and due to the necessity of choosing
among the possible collective fathers of the nation in Serbia (the president of
the Republic, the head of the Church or the commander-in-chief of the Army),
Knajter wished above all to win the favor of women. He states: "Once she is
married, the wife would be considered employed, with all the social security
benefits. The marriage would be her working place".[1] He forgot just a
trifle: who would provide the salary? Social security, special state funds,
labor unions, the husband, a provider, or perhaps the father of the nation? In
the end, he reveals another argument to justify the project, apart from the
"prevention of the disastrous decline in birth-rate": "This proposal would have
opened many new working places". Of course, working places for men, who would
only later be mobilized and sent to the front to defend the mother-nation, while
she, in the meantime, would give birth to cannon fodder. In Nazi Germany, on
April 7, 1943, the "cleansing women" started, that is, mass firing of employed
women. Fathers and sons of the nations everywhere agree with Hitler in his idea
that, "in politics, one has to win the support of women, since men spontaneously
follow them". Unfortunately, this is not true; as a matter of fact, exactly the
opposite holds, particularly in militarized societies.

Maternal Mobilization -
Saving the Nation from Extinction

The development of this
propaganda may be divided into two phases, although they are constantly
intertwined. The first phase started as early as the middle of eighties. It
consists of the preparation of various projects aimed at the "suppression of the
white plague". The second phase is the propaganda about childbearing for
patriotic reasons, that is, for the enhancement of national
security.

At
the beginning of the "first phase", demographers followed territorial
principles, asserting that in central and eastern Serbia, as well as in
Vojvodina, the birth-rate was dropping at an alarming rate, while in Kosovo it
was rising disturbingly. At this time, demographers had not yet introduced the
ethnic criterion. The imbalance of the demographic development was explained
instead either by economic factors or by changes in the system of values. As a
solution, mostly administrative measures were offered, the model "ideal family –
three children" was popularized, etc.

The demographic discourse -
in accordance with the expansion of the nationalist ideology - soon acquired a
repressive, racist character. Starting with January, 1990 to this day, all draft
bills resort to the "ethnic principle". The January 1990 Resolution on the
Renewal of the Population, as well as the May 1990 amendments, suggest a double
population policy - pro-natality for Serbia and Vojvodina and anti-natality for
Kosovo. It was immediately clear that different demographic situations were
used, on the one hand, in order to spread nationalist hatred, and on the other
as another instrument of patriarchal separation of and discrimination against
women on the ethnic basis. Feminists of Belgrade expressed their protest and
indignation: "Coercive measures of population policy are applied in countries
where human rights are violated daily, where the state deliberately encourages
ethnic and racial intolerance. The introduction of coercive managements in the
already poor network of gynecological facilities in Kosovo is impermissible,
since the right to medical services is a civilizational, not an ideological
issue. Such repressive measures fail to bring about the 'desired' results, nor
can they serve as the substitute for changes in the economic, social, and
educational spheres. If women really enjoyed the opportunity and the right to
choose, the population problem would not exist. Instead of administrative
measures of population policy, the differences in demographic development should
stimulate the creation of conditions where women will win their reproductive
rights".[2]

Official documents started
multiplying - for example, the resolution on the Renewal of the Population -
among which "The Warning" should be singled out for its neo-Malthusian, racist
character. Nine "significant" national institutions composed this document. The
ruling party, the Socialist Party of Serbia, adopted "The Warning" at its
congress as one of the three official documents. "The Warning" openly points to
the "threat" that minority peoples pose to the majority, that is since
"Albanians, Moslems and Gypsies, with their higher birth-rate, deviate from
national, humane reproduction, [they] threaten the rights of other peoples".[3] That is to say,
women of the above-mentioned nations (and not men, who still do not bear
children!) participate in the "general conspiration against the Serbian people";
they bear children out of separatist, fundamentalist reasons, and thus Serbian
women should bear children out of patriotic and moral reasons: "The will to bear
children should be mobilized".[4]

The newly formed parties joined the
appeals of demographers, physicians and state institutions to maternal
mobilization. In relating to women, almost all the parties failed the democracy
test; their ideas are imbued with militaristic language. The program of the
Association of All Serbs of the World, for example, published before the first
multiparty elections, the following proclamation: "In these difficult times for
our state, not bearing children, as a national behavior, will be considered
treason". In the same vein, the Serbian Popular Renewal suggested the foundation
of a fund for Serbian women who have four or more children. In the style of all
nationalist moralizing babble, the party's leader Mirko Jovic also urged: "To
equalize children born out of marriage with those born in it constitutes a form
of special war against the Serbian people". Nationalist are fond of speaking
about honesty, going back to the roots, and medieval idyll; thus, the 1990
program of the Serbian Renewal Movement provides that one of the goals of its
policy is "the restoration of the family, the return to customs, the ensuring of
conditions for an honest living. The Serbian Renewal Movement will place its
capabilities at the service of the renewal of the Serbian character, striving
for the flourishing of those virtues of the Serbian man that will soon become a
part of the Serbian moral code". Feminists replied to these Serbian politicians
worried about the extinction of the nation with the following: "To all the
guardians of the Serbian morality we suggest that they examine the model of
parthenogenetic procreation (conception without sin) and to clone themselves
into innumerable Serbian copies. We suggest cooperative financing of this
genetic engineering. It may be assumed that young Serbian fetuses will be
immediately christened, then incited and trained for hatred and war against the
numerous enemies of the Serbian people".[5]

Moral
condemnations: the Extremely Misogynous Character of the
Propaganda

Generally speaking, this
propaganda is imbued with strong moral condemnations and hatred against women.
"The Warning" accuses women of not having children out of "conformism and
selfishness". Marko Mladenovic, an official demographer, in one of the famous
pathetic statements about the "biological death, the gangrene, the tragedy",
reveals the time-old desire of men to usurp women's procreative power: "Our man
does not have children because happiness for him means having fun, a car, or a
summer cottage. This is egoism".[6] Then this enraged
militarist joins cradles and guns together: "How to save Serbia! In 15 or 20
years there will be nobody to work, give birth and wage war".[7]

The Church enthusiastically
joined the expansion of this "emotional plague of fascism", as Virginia Woolf
termed it in 1940: "Those who care for enjoyments, fun, summer holidays or
furniture are more numerous than those who care for having children".[8] Or, "today many
Serbian women kill their children by abortion. Feminists are in favor of killing
unborn children. Fortunately, they have nothing to do with the being of the
Serbian people".[9] Some are
particularly furious because, in spite of all the obstacles, the connections
between the feminists from Belgrade and Zagreb still exist, and these latter are
"gravely" accused: these feminists from Serbia are very well connected with
feminists from Zagreb, who "propagate the extinction of the Serbian people".[10]

Apart from hatred and
condemnation, the Church also envisions natural punishments for women who do not
bear children: "Women who bear children seldom get cancer. And the more children
they have, the more they are immune to this horrible disease. Spinsters and
women who prevent childbirth are by 40 percent more often afflicted by cancer,
particularly breast cancer, than women who have children".[11]

Patriotic
Mobilization

The father of the nation
(this time embodied in the president of the Republic), Slobodan Milosevic, in
his "historical speech" at Kosovo Polje in June, 1989 declared: "If we are not
very good at working, we are excellent at fighting". This was the beginning of
actual preparations for the war. He had chosen the right place - "the cradle of
the Serbian people", but also the place of the great collective defeat. The
offended honor of the fatherland will be revenged by military raids, since "we
must not forget that once we used to be an army - large, brave, proud. Nowadays,
six centuries later, once again we are fighting and more battles are ahead". At
the same place, and after the Battle of Kosovo, the cult of the heroic Jugovic
mother was born, the mother who offers her sons to the death. War trumpets are
heard all over the country, while nationalists demand that maternity hospitals
become recruitment centers: "For each Serbian soldier who fell in Slovenia,
Serbian mothers must give birth to a hundred new soldiers".[12]

It is no longer enough to
bear children in order to prevent the extinction of the nation, but sons are now
needed for the defense of the fatherland and the struggle with "enemy peoples".
Nationalist demographers, linking childbearing to war, accurately calculate the
pace of the enemy's advancement: "The last Serbs will defend themselves from the
Kalemegdan fortress, in the year 2091. But this last battle may also happen
earlier, having in mind pessimistic prognoses".[13] Later on, the
same demographic "mathematician" has come to an even more precise calculation,
with an unmistakable admixture of racism: "In the Balkians there are nations
multiplying at rabbit's rate, with 10 or 15 children per family. In fifty years
they will reach Belgrade".[14] The similarity
with Nazi Germany is no coincidence: "It must be made possible to each German
woman to have as many children as she likes, since, if not, in 20 years the
Third Reich would be left without the divisions necessary for the survival of
our people".[15]

The racist and militarist
logic that "we must be more numerous than them" is also followed in Montenegro:
"Eastern Orthodox population lives in the municipalities with low birth-rate,
while where Albanians and Moslems are in the majority the birth-rate is high.
The issue of birth-rate is all the more important having in mind that
Montenegro's neighbors are three states whose intentions are suspicious".[16]

The propaganda is not
restricted to mass media. Institutions, lavishly supported by the state, with
nothing to offer but repressive measures, keep springing up every day (councils,
boards, commissions, committees for the population renewal). Some of them, like
the Fund for the Protection of Mothers and Offspring (founded in Belgrade in
January, 1993) insist most on financial help, that is, membership fee as the
best means to "supress the white plague". This makes one think that out of this
fund "all the Serbian people will arm itself so that finally all Serbs may live
in the same state".[17]

Some of them have a more
"modern" point of view and consider the problem in terms of the laws of the
market: "Bearing children is like any other industry: the quantity of output is
proportionate to the amount of capital investments".[18] Since for this
"eminent" expert, the woman is a body that is possessed, and the man is the
owner of the belly and the children, in his misogyny he forgets about the laws
he refers to: "Although pregnancy was brought about by the sexual intercourse
between the woman and the man, talking in the capitalist sense, we would say the
following: at the moment of conception, the foetus is in 50 percent the property
of the woman and in 50 percent of the man. But as the pregnancy progresses,
man's investments decrease, since all the invested capital is the property of
the woman".[19]

The misogynous attitude of
the majority of demographers, physicians and politicians even makes them forget
the official opinion of the regime that "the unjust sanctions are to blame for
everything": "Poverty and the sanctions are not to blame. We used to be even
poorer than we are, and still our predecessors had 7 or 8 children".[20]

A colleague of this
demographer, afforded enormous space in official media, wrote: "The sanctions
and the war cannot be an excuse. Earlier, birth and marriage were the most
sacred act to every woman. And nowadays mothers advise their daughters not to
marry, not to have children, to be egoists. During our 35th Gynecological Week
we ascertained that the reasons why women do not have children are 85 percent
egoistic, 26 percent masked egoism, and only 8 percent genuine economic
reasons".[21]

But this was too much for
the President of the Republic, who corrected them, reminding them that in their
national and misogynous trance they must not forget that "the sanctions are
killing our unborn babies".[22] Since in
militarist societies it has always been assumed that "maternity is the
counterpart of war, or war is the symmetrical complement of maternity" (E.
Badinter), all this is accompanied by the appropriate language and rituals.
Nicole Laroux illustrates by the example of Sparta how "delivery is associated
with war, the infantry-man with the woman in childbirth. The word ponos,
denoting "pain", is used both for a young man training in strengthening his body
and for a woman suffering labor pains. Maternity is seen as similar to
battle".[23]

In Nazi Germany, medals
were awarded to "good, fertile mothers" who gave birth to and reared the castle
of warriors. In Serbia, in Kosovo Polje, since June, 1993, the Church gives
medals to warriors and mothers with four or more children: "We have established
the Jugovic Mother decoration in order to encourage bearing more children in our
people". Last year they awarded 16 golden and 14 silver medals. Since they were
not satisfied with the "performance", they admonished: "In earlier times,
mothers were able to send as many as nine sons to the emperor's army, so that
they could fight for freedom of their country and of their Orthodox faith. We
have such mothers today, too, but very few".[24] Since in June,
1994 "only" 27 medals were awarded. Serbian women bear increasingly less
children, and Serbian men are increasingly unwilling to go to war.